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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23434906">Love Comes Softly</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Be_Right_Back/pseuds/Be_Right_Back'>Be_Right_Back</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Birthday ficlets [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Trek, Star Trek: Picard</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(but it's super light), (but seriously they're too tired for that romantic stuff), Character Study, Comfort, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Idiots Loving Each Other, Implied Sexual Content, Introspection, Lovers to Friends, Spoilers, Unresolved Emotional Tension, they're working on it</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 11:28:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,828</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23434906</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Be_Right_Back/pseuds/Be_Right_Back</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt from Siszx:<br/><em>Happy coming B day! Yay!  (why am I so excited...) I’m thinking it might be a good idea to have behind scene POVs from both Cris and Agnes from ep 6-10 on how they became closer to each other...It might not be difficult for Cris to care about people as it is who he naturally is. But an intimate relationship? I bet he hasn’t been there with anybody for quite long... Well, is it too much to ask???</em></p><p>Or: Cris and Agnes' relationship is complicated, it's weird, and it's worth it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Agnes Jurati &amp; Cristóbal Rios, Agnes Jurati/Cristóbal Rios, Raffi Musiker &amp; Cristóbal Rios</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Birthday ficlets [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1685512</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>44</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Love Comes Softly</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siszx82/gifts">Siszx82</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hope that works for you! Gotta admit, I got a bit carried away ;) (Please tell me that you're siszx on tumblr and that I didn't just gift this to the wrong person :P)</p><p>Spoilers for S1 of Star Trek: Picard.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first time they sleep together – the only time, so far – Cris knows Agnes is not just making a mistake. She calls it that, sure – rather unflattering, although he later comes to suppose that it has more to do with her being worried about hurting him than the other way around.</p><p>But it’s not just a mistake.</p><p>It’s a move. (It’s her trying to fill the void inside, to heal the terrible wounds Oh and her own actions have left on her soul. It’s her trying to distract herself from the fact that she’s just killed her once lover. Maybe it’s her trying to prove that she isn’t a praying mantis. Cris doesn’t know that the first night. He just knows it’s a move.)</p><p>They explore each other that night, but their souls remain off-limits. Agnes’ hand strays to Cris’ many scars and there’s a little bit of fear in her eyes, something not quite like horror, or disgust, but something unsettled. <em>“Why do you even have scars?” </em>She would ask if she dared, because her own skin is unmarred, flawless – because dermal regenerators are a thing and some of the scars are way too big and too bad not to have required one.</p><p>He wouldn’t answer even if she asked. Cris likes Agnes. He likes her shy smile, and the way she’s so tiny against his chest right now, the way she rambles when she’s nervous and often tries to annoy him into putting down his books. He likes how she’s so much lighter than the rest of them – except maybe for Elnor, although the kid knows death like few do, so maybe he isn’t that light after all.</p><p>What Cris doesn’t like is that he can see through the sunshine and the babbling and the cute smiles and make out the frayed edges, the anxiety that shouldn’t be here when you’re adorable and smart and sheltered like Agnes P. Jurati.</p><p>It could just be a one-night stand. That’s what they tell each other, that’s what Agnes desperately hopes for as Cris runs a gentle hand on her cheek and pushes her hair out of the way. They’re in her quarters, of course. He wouldn’t have sex in his own. That comforts her, in a twisted way, tells her he’s not actually letting her in. No broken hearts to worry about, then.</p><p>It also makes her feel empty, because Cris is so caring and so amazing and so anxious to meet her needs that it makes her wonder if the tough Captain thing isn’t <em>all </em>an act. She knew some of it was crap, sure. She knew that Cris cared. She’s just realizing how much.</p><p>And it’s not just about her either. He’s not in love, not at all. She clings to that while they have sex, remind herself that he won’t hate her in the morning. But she’s not that special. Cris just has a big heart, and so much room to fill.</p><p>That’s the mistake, in the end. Trying to feel better by sleeping with a guy she could care about. She asks him to leave when they’re done, and he doesn’t look upset. She feels terrible about it, and Elnor picks up on it the next morning.</p><p>Cris picks up on it too. He knows she’s not being honest, he knows proper little doctors who have never been to space and laugh in amazement at things like “romulan warrior nuns” and say <em>“I’ve watered your plants”</em> to make conversation don’t just decide to sleep away the pain.</p><p>She’s not the type, it doesn’t feel right. Cris is a pretty good judge of character, and when she sends him away he can see the despair in her eyes, the aborted hand motion that betrays her wanting to hold him there.</p><p>He leaves anyway, because if Agnes P. Jurati thinks sleeping with him was a mistake, that’s Agnes P. Jurati’s problem. It’s not his first one-night stand. He hasn’t invited her into his quarters anyway, it’s not like this is a heart thing.</p><p>He sees the signs when they approach the cube. The way she’s disappointed about not going aboard, tries to tell them it’s relief. Cris doesn’t buy it, because he knows people, he gets them without even having to try. That was part of his job as XO, really, the part that he’s pretty sure Emil inherited and he himself managed to retain. It’s not the same as being <em>good </em>with people, that one trait is a bit more damaged.</p><p>When he sees Agnes freaking out, when she says she’s done and that the Romulans will kill the robot girl and good riddance, he’s not sure what to do. He’s sure what to <em>think</em> though. Agnes throws up the cake and the Romulan snakehead is still tailing his Sirena (a snake trying to catch a fish, really, how stupid is that?), and he decides that they need to chat.</p><p>He really should have talked to Raffi before pressuring Agnes into admitting she’s the one with the tracker. He really shouldn’t have had the faintest sliver of suspicion towards Raffi at all, because she’s <em>Raf</em>, his big hermana Raf that he holds when she’s crying and stupid drunk, she’s Raf who’s been there for him and who he doesn’t even remember meeting because it’s been close to ten years now. He entertained the notion that maybe she had no choice, maybe she was being blackmailed with that kid of hers – it was dumb. It was dumb and he shouldn’t have.</p><p>It’s <em>Raffi</em> and he’s still not trusting enough for about half an hour, on the off chance that he’s wrong about Agnes, and it all goes to hell. He tells himself that he has to. He <em>has </em>to be cautious, because when he gets overconfident people get hurt, and he can’t add that to the blood that has painted the inside of his eyelids red. He can’t add to the nightmares.</p><p>So he doesn’t tell Raffi, and he goes to Agnes without realizing that Raf was onto her as well, and between the two of them they manage to push and press until Agnes completely shatters. Fuck him, so proud of himself for making her spill it, smiling at her like it’s an inside joke when she tells him it’s not Raffi.</p><p>Fuck him.</p><p>When he runs to sickbay, his EMH somberly tells him that another person has tried to kill themselves because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut, and that’s enough to make him <strike>shatter</strike> bark at Picard when he asks for an ETA. It’s enough to make him avoid sickbay and to shove the memory of his night with Agnes in a dark part of his mind that he only visits against his will – every time he sleeps.</p><p>Then there’s not-Jana, and it’s all too much. It’s Raffi who’s there to hold him together when his broken pieces splinter and crack into smaller ones, crumble into dust and leave his soul bleeding and raw. It’s Raf who is family and strokes his cheek and hands him coffee, and it’s Raf who gets to hear that fucking story he’s never told <em>anyone</em>.</p><p>When he tells Raf about his P— his <em>Captain</em>, not his dad, never his dad, he has completely forgotten about Agnes P. Jurati and her own shipload of problems. Agnes, he likes. Agnes, he cares about. Raf is his shelter, and there’s no comparing the two.</p><p>But when he’s done crying and Raf is done holding him, and he feels the tiniest bit like he can try and be the composed starship Captain again, the caring overflows. It’s the only thing he can do to fix his messes, isn’t it? Caring about the people hurt along the way, and helping them through it. That’s the thing his Captain failed at, opting out of the cleaning up when Cris desperately needed him there to make sense of things.</p><p>Cris has failed enough to fail on that.</p><p>He gives Soji french fries and ice-cream, asks Agnes if she’s okay, and talks about the <em>Ibn Majid</em>. He lets Soji steal his ship to save her family – and really, what else can he do when he watched the person he cared about most blow his own brains out? – and he lets her risk la Sirena to get to synth planet faster.</p><p>He gives and he gives, because every time he tries to <em>get</em> he fucks it up so badly that he’s known for a long time now that he’s better off never wanting anything from anyone ever again.</p><p>It’s kind of a relief to know that it wasn’t really Agnes’ fault. It’s enraging to know that the one officer responsible for destroying his dreams and his family is the one who ripped Agnes’ innocence from her. It doesn’t feel fair, and he hates that the universe had apparently enough of a sense of irony to make them meet.</p><p><em>Really? </em>He wants to shout to the stars. <em>Really? Her life couldn’t suck on its own? Everyone’s trauma on this goddamn ship has to be linked to that one time we beamed two synths aboard the </em>Ibn Majid <em>and I gained a lifetime’s worth of nightmares? </em></p><p>That makes him care ever more. It’s not fair and nothing has ever been, and he puts his heart on the line once again and decides that he’ll protect them, all of them. He’ll protect Agnes the brainwashed murderer he slept with, and Picard the grand heroic ass who can’t see beyond his next move and his redemptive mission, and Soji the synth girl he can’t look at without aching and who could possibly be the death of them all, and Elnor the brave kid they thought they’d lost and who looks at them like they hang the stars in the sky. Seven and Raffi can take care of themselves, not like this rest, and he can count of them to have his back as well.</p><p>But that stupid crew? He’ll jump between them and phaser bolts, and he’ll grab not-Jana n°2’s hand right as she moves to touch Agnes’ face. Never mind that she’s probably ten times stronger than he is. Never mind that looking at her makes him want to sob, that he won’t sleep for two weeks after this. Never mind that Agnes says it’s fine.</p><p>He’s not fine with it, he’s not <em>fine</em>, Agnes is not fine, and he cares.</p><p>And then Agnes has a cat in her arms and asks him not to forget her, and she speaks Spanish like she does everything, carefully and looking very cute, and he strokes her cheek. She’s <em>inolvidable</em>, like the rest of that stupid crew.</p><p>Maybe, just maybe, Cris regrets not inviting her in his quarters. Maybe that was his mistake. Maybe they could have had something before the world burned, as it might still happen. Maybe he regrets leaving that night instead of holding on to her.</p><p>She’s light and she’s cute and she shines like the stars, and perhaps he shouldn’t always settle for the easier relationships, for caring from afar. Maybe his heart needs to start taking risks again, when his body has no problems doing so.</p><p>When it’s over, when they’ve managed not to die – except for Picard, oh <em>god</em>, Cris is not sleeping for a <em>month </em>after that – and when it’s time to mourn and to let their guard down, Cris opens up to Seven. They’re so much alike and she reminds him so much of Raffi that it’s not hard. After all, opening up to Agnes was just a maybe.</p><p>She’s in that lab anyway, tinkering with Soji and Soong and he doesn’t want to know why.</p><p>Then Picard is back. Because of course he is. Of fucking course. (Cris is not sleeping for a long, <em>long</em> month. He can’t bear to close his eyes and see his pops alive and well only to wake up and to remember that people don’t come back to life. Not unless they’re Jean-Luc Picard, too good and too saintly for death.)</p><p>Agnes and Soji and Soong bring Picard back, and then it’s all ancient history, and everybody kind of shyly asks Cris for a ride home, and then adds that they don’t have to go straight away, that they could make a few detours here and there.</p><p>“If you want to stay, you could just say so,” he tells them.</p><p>His voice doesn’t shake, his hands don’t either, but his soul certainly does – because what if they don’t want to?</p><p>They all want to.</p><p>He maybe cries a little once he’s alone with Raf. And then he remembers another maybe, a more important one. Cris doesn’t want to fall in love. He doesn’t want to play into the worn-out romantic tropes, doesn’t want to risk losing Agnes’ affection over something so trivial as sex or the label “boyfriend,” doesn’t want to risk falling out and making her hate him.</p><p>(He doesn’t think she would.)</p><p>All the same, they’re a crew now, and as an XO he’d never have pursued a relationship with any of the other officers. He tells her all of that before they leave, the two of them huddled beneath that tree where he talked to Seven. Agnes pulls a face.</p><p>“We… We don’t have to,” she murmurs. “The sex, and the boyfriend-girlfriend thing, I mean. We don’t have do that, not right away.”</p><p>That gets him to tilt his head curiously. Agnes feels shy and nervous and like she might be about to cry, but it’s kind of in a good way. Kind of in a way she’s only ever felt for Bruce, and that she knows was wrong in that particular case but isn’t wrong now. She doesn’t want to mess it up either, not after almost fucking up their crew and miraculously being granted the others’ forgiveness.</p><p>She doesn’t want to burn with desire for Cris and promise him her whole heart and soul, and feel too much and too strongly when they’re all so exhausted. She wants to rest. And she wants to rest in Cris’ strong arms, her face hidden in his neck, and she wants to breathe in the scent of la Sirena and aguardiente and real cigars on his skin, and forget everything else.</p><p>She wants this to be soft and caring, and nothing like in the holos where people pull each other out from the brink of despair by kissing passionately and making great love speeches. She just wants to rest, and she wants Cris to care about her, and she doesn’t want much more.</p><p>“We could just take it slowly,” she clarifies, and there are no butterflies in her stomach because this isn’t some sappy young adult novel. Her skin tingles, but that’s just a hormonal reaction to being this close to Cris, and that’s not love. “I’m don’t think I want to be in love with you.”</p><p>He nods. He doesn’t want her to be either. He holds her close, presses a kiss to her temple and blows on her face to get the hair out of the way.</p><p>“I just want to love you,” she feels compelled to add. And because she’s nervous, she rambles. “I want to see this grow one day at a time, and I don’t want to rush things or make a mess, or make everything awkward for everybody else by fighting and breaking up and making up and making out and ruining what we have. I want to wake up in my quarters and go eat cereals with Elnor and Soji and everybody without being annoyed at you not being there or waking up too early or too late. I don’t want to worry about any more broken hearts, and I don’t want to see you as just my boyfriend.”</p><p>On that, they are agreed. Cris smiles at her and lets her rests her head on his shoulder, and he kisses her temple again, and he tells her that they could make it work. He asks if just kissing is okay, because he’d kind of missed it, and Agnes’ skin is unmarred and flawless and so very soft. She says yes, but not big passionate kisses, just soft ones like he’s giving her now, and that’s great, because that’s just what he had in mind.</p><p>He feels great about not being girlfriend and boyfriend yet, and he feels great that she too knows they’re still too raw and too clumsy and too out of practice with that kind of things to make it work. He feels great that this is still going somewhere, and that this somewhere might be a real intimate relationship one day. He feels great that she wants to love him. He feels great that what they have is going to be <em>inolvidable</em>, and not just another one-night stand or a lover that goes wrong. </p><p>He feels great that he loves her.</p><p>He feels great.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Guys, domestic Sirena shenanigans are the canon ending to S1!! Let's unleash the fluff.</p></blockquote><div class="children module" id="children">
  <b class="heading">Works inspired by this one:</b>
  <ul>
    <li>
        <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23489929">[PODFIC] Love Comes Softly, by Be_Right_Back</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig">Thimblerig</a>
    </li>
  </ul>
</div></div></div>
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